Egyptian Relief of an Owl

Provenance

Private collection, France, acquired prior to 1980

Description / Expertise

This sizeable fragment is carved in sunk relief, the bird facing to the right with its face turned towards us. Certain species of bird occur in almost no other context than as a hieroglyphic sign. For the Egyptians, the owl had none of the more modern connotations of wisdom. It was the form by which the alphabetic hieroglyph ‘m’ was written and when the bird is depicted in isolation, that is what it represents.

Carved in limestone, from a hieroglyphic relief